I had many reasons for going to Belgrade this
cold December -- friends, relatives, a trip to Kosovo and
to find a hospital with most urgent needs for an American
humanitarian group wanting to help children after a
decade of embargo plus seventy-eight days of bombings
this spring. I had a selfish reason too -- to avoid an
American White Christmas in the US and all the obscene
sales and hysteria on the streets, buy on TV, in the
papers, in our minds, and to start the new century in a
country where I was born.

I will skip over the journey which is very
long since due to US sanctions you can't fly directly to
Belgrade. Getting there, I was luckier this time than in
July when from my window in Belgrade I saw destroyed
buildings and the building I was in was in bad shape, and
walking out every day you saw more horrors, a beautiful
art deco government of Serbia amongst them. Another,
across the street, a pride of modern architecture looked
awful, gutted in a special way as if Martians had
attacked it; hundreds of windows with pieces of glass
like lace produced and eerie sound, a music of its own in
the wind. I remember a child, a boy around five waiting
for the bus with his mother kept looking at those windows
then said to me and everybody I guess, 'NATO.' I asked
him, 'Who is NATO?" He used a child word to describe
it which in Serbian means a monster. He repeated that
several times. That was in July. I don't know why I have
remembered him and think of him more than other people.
Maybe what we remember tells something about us.

It was cold this December, snow, rain, ice
preventing many things, travels outside or inside
Belgrade and there was a never-ending shortage of gas.
Cab drivers talked about it all the time, like I can't
take you, see, I have just enough gas to go home now.
Still, there was electricity every day in my apartment
and heat if you think that NATO tried to destroy both
this spring. It was amazing how they worked hard in
Yugoslavia and kept fixing things, even during the
bombing they kept repairing what the bombs had destroyed
the day before. How they kept moving their newborn babies
from place to place, women in labor giving birth with
sirens, with the sound of exploding bombs very close,
next door. An image, a photo of a wounded mother and her
wounded son, just born, haunts me. Both bruised. I
remember my own fear giving birth to my son even though
there were no sirens in the air nor the bombs. Will that
baby remember the aggression, the world as a horrible
place when they tried to kill him, will he think it was
safer not to be born? NATO destroyed a hospital in
Belgrade and in other towns as well, old age homes,
schools, post offices, kids' camps. So, I can't complain
now, this December. What's one day without heat. The heat
did stop around eight or nine in the evening but it
didn't matter that much since I went to bed with two
sweaters and my hat and socks. There was heat every
morning as people got up and went to work.

I observed -- there were no homeless people
sleeping in the streets, subways or under bridges as you
drive to Kennedy airport, there were no people starving
although many are poor and it's no wonder with more than
a million refugees from Bosnia, from Croatia and now from
Kosovo and this in a country under embargo. Something was
always found for them, in small towns like the one I came
from, in schools, recreational centers, gyms or with
friends like the people next street over who had two
Serbian families from Kosovo sleeping all over their
small apartment. These were ordinary people, no different
from many people in the States who suddenly had no jobs,
their kids had lost their friends and schools and they
had to flee leaving everything behind. Who did it? NATO
and the KLA, they say, who else. They are not the only
ones.

There are virtually no Romi left in Kosovo,
nor Slavic Muslims, nor Jews. Albanians loyal to
Yugoslavia have fled too although there are still pockets
of Serbs left in K. Mitrovica and a few villages where
they live in ghettoes now, without easy access to food or
health care. And they are invisible to the world, and
every attempt is made that they remain that way. We were
unable to visit those villages, a bus of journalists,
some from Yugoslavia, some from other countries in the
Balkans because NATO wouldn't permit. They did in the
beginning, not after they heard about our travel plans.

Their refusal was too transparent for everyone
-- they said they couldn't guarantee our safety. It was
obvious to every journalist this December that this was a
joke -- they didn't want the world to know about the
Serbs inside ghettoes nor their whereabouts since other
journalists, those who get permission to travel wouldn't
even know where to look for these people. Can you imagine
an all powerful NATO - tanks, planes, money, technology,
name it, coming to protect and liberate the Balkans for
freedom and democracy what else, all that power and
strength that bombed civilians and everything people need
to live, these macho guys with fancy guns unable to help
just a bus of journalists. Actually there were
twenty-four of us. It was so absurd you wanted to laugh.
Some did. NATO was only good, and efficient so far, in
helping the exodus from Kosovo. It did nothing in
preventing murders, destruction of homes and churches,
while they, those brave boys, just stood and watched.
There are pictures of them watching the arson this
summer, we don't see any pictures now. It's not supposed
to exist.

I was pissed, although that's not the right
word for it, I can't think of anything in English to
describe the feeling, Kosovo is part of my country as
much as New Jersey or Vermont is to someone from New
York, Kosovo is where a cousin of mine died young,
fighting Fascism, tortured by both local and outside
fascists in '43. Kosovo is my country, not NATO's but I
had better admit it -- a reality principle -- they are
the new occupiers, after all it was not easy to get a
travel pass from the fascists in 1943. There is no
difference now. The US- led NATO base is the largest
military base in Europe (and they have them all over the
Balkans), it sets its own rules and a former president of
a well-known organization 'Doctors without borders,'
Bernard Kouchner is now running his own NATO show. He has
formed a government (who is he to do this) in which only
one ethnic group- Albanians sympathetic to the KLA and
NATO are allowed to participate. That's called democracy,
I suppose. He has even kicked out Greek doctors from his
former Doctors Without Borders because he suspects them
to be sympathetic to the Serbs. NATO has virtually
established a form of fascist government where everything
political, military and economic, is in their hands. Now
they even have NATO television which is to broadcast all
over the Balkans. The KLA is presently a useful ally,
after all their top general was US trained, but this
won't continue for too long. The principle is use and
dump, use and dump, just like everywhere else. Many
Albanians have seen the light. A rape and murder of a
child by an American soldier this January might open
their eyes even more. In Macedonia there are constant
fights between people and NATO soldiers over their abuse
-- drinking, shouting, mistreating and sexually harassing
local women. It will get worse, the Macedonians think.

The rape and murder of an Albanian child by a
US soldier, reported in The New York Times this January
made me think about a long piece by Tamara Rakovich
called 'NATO Bordellos in Pristina' that appeared on
August 11, 1999 in the paper "Glas." She talks
about a woman she had interviewed inside the building of
the Red Cross in Belgrade and the woman refugee describes
how men and women were separated then women, both
Albanian and the Serbs led to a house outside Pristina.
She saw half-naked women of both ethnic groups crying,
she doesn't know what nationality the NATO soldiers were
except that they spoke English. It's a long and detailed
piece. She escaped -- she told the soldier that she had
AIDS. There were three more articles in the same paper on
the same subject. I can't say this is true or not, I did
not interview that woman. All I know is this -- an army
of occupation -- power, arrogance, thousands of men --
has never done any good to a country they invade.

Unable to go to Kosovo, I settled living my
daily life in Belgrade. As always I am amazed by the
amount of information, different papers and different
views. If you know how to read the language, you can get
the truth by reading two papers. And these papers are
less provincial than in the States, reading them you knew
what's happening in the entire world. I was amazed by the
number of cultural events, many free -- lectures, poetry
readings, concerts, plays performed in unusual settings
and a style that was brand new, daring, it stayed in your
head, it was not a sitcom. All this in a country that was
bombed six months ago. There were new health clinics I
observed for the adults and children suffering from the
bombing traumas. I knew a child who had stopped speaking
for months during the bombing but now he was doing fine.
A friend of mine, a writer who was very calm during the
aggression was having a delayed reaction in December --
she couldn't fall asleep until early morning when it was
safe to fall asleep in June, when the second siren
signaled the end of the nightly raids. Still, looking at
people and talking to them, I thought that they had
managed better than people would have if only one bomb
had dropped on New York City, or just one siren in the
air -- because they're communal, they were and are
helping each other, everybody was a victim and a target,
it was all in the open, they were singing and dancing
together in the squares and the bridges as the bombs fell
around them. I remember that this spring they sounded
much calmer than us in the States. It helps that it's not
a repressive culture, you talk, you laugh, you cry
openly. With others. And you get better with others too.
We only had each other, on the phone with an indifferent
population around us laughing, playing with their dogs in
the sunlight this terrible spring while we didn't sleep
at all, every bomb, every destroyed bridge a direct hit
against our bodies and I vomited daily the first two
weeks powerless to stop the orgy, unable to reach people.
In my town the phones were dead after the post office was
bombed. The phone lines are repaired now.

Americans have asked me often, 'Do they hate
us'? No. As Americans who were there this summer could
see -- American books are translated and reviewed,
American plays are performed and they have always had a
love of jazz. People in Belgrade were not nasty to them.
On the contrary. They can separate between the US
government and the American people. It's fair to say that
the International Action Center, an organization
committed to peace all over the world, had something to
do with it. They organized demonstrations, marches all
over the USA and people in Belgrade were able to hear and
see all this until the television station was bombed and
with it many people.

This December, as the Millennium approached,
it felt safe in Belgrade, like living in a large friendly
house full of relatives and friends, if something didn't
work you just knocked on the door. I often saw my friends
the same way, just knock on the door then the mad joy,
how they loved to be surprised. If you're too sick to go
to a hospital a doctor will come and see you. A flu
epidemic was on. On TV they talked about it, what to take
and what not, which pharmacies will be open during New
Year's. On TV images of bridges being rebuilt. Interviews
with people moving into their rebuilt homes.

In five months they have rebuilt so much, some
difficult bridges over deep ravines, railroads,
apartments. Workers did three shifts. It had the feel of
some other era, building and re-building after the second
war.

As the New Year approached, there were
attempts to decorate the city with a few lights. These
small attempts were so modest, reminding you of a poor
rural school or a poor family that tried, didn't want to
give up. It was never garish or cheap, just something
orphan about it. Something tender, you wanted to cry.
Don't waste electricity, they announced daily on TV. Even
those fir trees at the outside markets were small. Most
people didn't buy them. It seemed wasteful to buy
something you will soon throw away. They tried to get a
present, no matter how small, for a child.

Days came and went. Many things happened like
that, some funny, some joyful, like a sudden reunion as
friends I had not seen for years suddenly recognized me
on the street, but to meet a middle-aged American man in
Belgrade seemed almost exotic and in December. He had
through a series of accidents wandered into a poetry
reading even though he didn't understand a single word
but since my poem was the only one in English and in
Serbian he waited until the end to meet me. He was a nice
man, a real pacifist and he had his own complicated
reason to be there. In addition to his personal story, he
was having his teeth fixed at the same time because he
couldn't afford it on his pension (was he from upstate
New York or was it Vermont) while in Belgrade dentists
are very good he told me and due to the state of economy
they were very cheap. It occurred to me how stupid, I had
not thought of this before. You can always trust an
American to tell you about a bargain, the best deal.

Weddings took place with gypsy music and
dancing and I went to a few even though I knew no one at
the restaurant facing the market. There you can do it,
sort of drop in and nobody minded, it's supposed to bring
good luck to have a stranger appear. They were always
big, informal with this mood for which there is no word
in English. It's bigger than joy.

In general it was calm, almost hushed. People
on the streets waited for buses without complaining. They
were neither defeated nor gloomy, just an acceptance
their parents or grandparents had during other wars,
think survival, think potatoes, beans, warm shoes. And
five months after the bombing they appeared calmer than
people on the streets of New York, more centered and
balanced, as if no energy could be wasted on anything
superficial. Their calm affected me too. Slept well and
long. A glass of wine made me drunk. My high blood
pressure was gone. I began dreaming again, the first time
since the first bomb fell on Yugoslavia March 24th. Even
if all the reasons I had gone there for had failed it
made me happy that I was dreaming now and I dreamt of
waterfalls and clear mountain rivers of my childhood. It
occurred to me I should live there if I want to live for
a long time.

My American friends have often asked me the
same question, what was the worst I have seen... If you
go by the quantity of suffering the Kosovo refugees were
painful to talk with, many had lost everything, some were
refugees for the second time, from Krajina cleansed with
US help to this sad state now. The sight of wounded and
maimed in the hospitals was never easy for me but I am
better at it than the first time. Yet if I think of
something intolerable, of extreme grief, I remember, I
see her, the woman I sat next to on a bus. I don't
remember her name nor the town she is from. She was
holding a large photo of a handsome young man in her lap,
she kept gently patting the photo repeating like a chant,
my baby, mother's treasure. Her only son, she said,
killed by the bombs. There was nothing I could do or say,
frozen in my seat by so much pain. She was a simple
woman, maybe a worker or a peasant, her hands had done a
lot of work, I remember her hands more than her face,
more than her silent tears that she wiped with her
sleeve, her hands caressed the picture the way you caress
a child's hair before they fall asleep, she didn't see me
at all, she saw no one, she was not on the bus, she was
with her baby, her hands were unbearable to watch.

December 25th came and went. I noticed the
date, that's all. In the papers it said that bombers and
terrorists were getting ready to strike in the USA,
according to the FBI. They, the FBI, were getting ready
for this big thing or was it a dress rehearsal for
something else? I felt safe in Belgrade knowing nothing
will happen here of that sort, after all the country was
just bombed.

I could complain about the weather which
prevented many trips to other towns but who can argue
with nature and winter storms. Didn't go to my home town
in the mountains because it was snowed in. We talked on
the phone. Didn't go to Kosovo because of the NATO
occupation. I could complain and did that people didn't
clean the snow in front of their buildings and it became
ice and ice was dangerous for everyone but then who can
blame them for anything after what they have been
through. The biggest practical problem in the beginning
were my American boots, expensive and waterproof they
told me in New York in a store on the Upper West side. It
was a lie. After two days my feet were cold and wet and
it was hard to look for others in the middle of deep snow
and slush. I only had that pair, I worried about getting
ill. Eventually I found them, for eight dollars on the
Boulevard of Revolution, next to a bakery, not far from
the street of Ivana Milutinovica if anyone is interested.
They were like children's boots, green, bulky, and warm.

I didn't see all the hospitals I had intended.
I have been to many before, this is one area I know well.
Even though they have great doctors and plenty of care in
Yugoslavia, the embargo has killed more people these
years than the NATO bombs. Hospitals need spare parts for
treatments and diagnostic procedures but how can you get
them if the bank accounts are frozen and those companies
that sold the equipment and who have been paid to service
and fix -- are refusing to. It must be, what else, that
they too belong to NATO or are afraid of punishment. This
should be another essay, another time, hospitals deserve
more than a paragraph.

New Year's eve I was to go to a concert in the
square where they sang and screamed this spring but it
didn't turn out that way. I was in bed with a high fever,
asleep until I heard shouts of kids outside the windows
and knew the Millennium had arrived. Awakened,
remembering in an instant an old superstition that you
are supposed to make a wish, I did -- good health, peace
and an end to occupation. Then fell asleep again. Three
days later, still sick, I waited with a friend until dawn
for a van that would take me across another country to my
plane.

Nadja Tesich is a writer, filmmaker, and
former professor of film at Brooklyn College.